Pressed Flowers Socks – Yarn, Books & Roses

Hannah and the CoalBear: Weekly Report, Caturdate 1/13/24

Hi. I’m Mateo.

It has been a pretty darn boring week for me. It has been snowing and cold, and the Mother of Cats has NOT been letting me out as much as I would like. I can see the bunnies and those horrid squirrels all running around outside, but do I get to spend time on the deck, belly flat against the wood, slowly creeping up towards the wire, digging in my back claws, dreaming of the rush towards that big fat bunny in the garden… NO. I hardly got any time out at all. The Mother of Cats was full of so many excuses that involved snow, wind, cold… whatever. If the bunny can manage, I’m sure that I’d be fine. To be fair, I guess I should admit that things have been a little extreme lately weather-wise. Check out today’s weather and what the City and County of Denver had to say about it.

The Mother of Cats has been home and staying busy reading and knitting this week. She cleaned up the yarn stash early in the week and I have to admit, there is a lot of yarn. This is what the stash looked like when she was done.

Most of those plastic bins have yarn in them! There are also drawers with all the little fun things that she uses while sewing and knitting (like knitting needles, stitch marker sets, and her pin cushions), but the vast bulk is… yarn.

The Mother of Cats has been making decisions for the new year (she calls them resolutions, but that’s a crazy word. The better phrase would be The Wishful Thinking List, because that’s what it really is), but she seems almost perked up now that she has organized herself for the coming year. She wants to read 50 books, knit 50 hats, plant milkweed in her garden, and maybe convince the jade plant to bloom. That’s it. She has decided that she will only knit and work with yarn from the stash this year.

I mean, look at these sock sets that she found in the stash. She should knit these up before she buys any new yarn, right?!

The Mother of Cats still has some projects that she needs to get finished up with, so she is also working on them for a couple of days each week between the hat knitting. This week she focused on some socks that were started last year, and this evening she got them finished.

These are knitted from the Pressed Flowers Socks pattern. She still has a sweater to get done and Hannah wants her blanket!!

She has also been cranking out the hats and PICC line covers since the start of the year. This is what she has managed so far:

Those hats are DK weight Barleys by Tin Can Knits. She has been knitting them with doubled fingering weight yarn and they are turning out nice.

So, that is all that has been going on around here. (yawn) Maybe I can get Hannah to get up and chase me for a while. Maybe the laser light will come on pretty soon. Maybe I can find one of my chirpy toys. I think that they are all under the bed… what?… don’t you keep your important stuff under the bed?

Or maybe I’ll just take a nap…

This is Mateo, the CoalBear, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

There are some other projects lurking in the wings, but I don’t want to commit to them. I bought another quilt pattern, and I pulled out my little tabletop loom too. Those are just side projects and I really plan to commit to producing hats for the community group that I knit for. Last year there were more than 900 hats donated, and somehow, we have acquired even more requests in the last few months.

All of a sudden, everything that I’m reading and watching has Asian (and publishing or Chinese triads) elements. It was a compete accident: I had put holds on the books in my library months ago, and they arrived in my inbox withing a couple of days of each other. While I was reading Yellowface, The Brothers Sun appeared on Netflix. Synchronicity, right?

These are two really great books, and I really, really enjoyed The Brothers Sun. Thanks to synchronicity, I kind of understood common references (snakeheads, the one-child policy of China, auctions in publishing…) as they popped up in each book or episode of The Brothers Sun. Whew. There were common themes too, such as the relationships between children and their mothers, the struggle to find your own way, racism, the debt we owe to each other and our family, plagiarism, bullying, deaths, you name it, these media sources had it.

Now I’m reading The Maid. Would you believe that there is some bullying and a death already? Of course there is!

I also have to share this picture that was posted on Facebook today of an old newspaper picture of my high school gymnastics team. How fun to see my younger self now that I’m old and walking with a cane. 🙂

Hannah and the CoalBear: Last Caturday Report for 2023

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see me in my Christmas tissue paper pile? The best part of Christmas is playing with the boxes and wrapping paper!

The Mother of Cats had a nice Christmas Eve when her son came down to help make the traditional lasagna, watch the traditional Christmas movie (Die Hard) and exchange gifts. Mateo (the CoalBear) loves the Mother of Cats’ son!!! Okay, I think it is because Mateo just loves lots of commotion, but he had a great Christmas running in and out of the house and onto the catio. Basically, he specialized in being underfoot and getting in the way most of the time while they were cooking. I stayed in the closet for most of this, but I did come out once they sat down for dinner.

Mateo: Hey, I need lots of stimulation because I’m a Maine coon cat. We have needs!! The CoalBear variety of Maine coons really, really need a lot of attention. By the way, do you like my winter fur? It is coming really well now.

Anyway, let me show you our Christmas presents!!! We got chirping toys; a little squirrel for me, and little birds for Mateo.

The Mother of Cats is handling all the chirping okay, but she does get a little cranky when Mateo plays with his bird under the bed at 4am… Did I mention that Mateo chirps too? There is a lot of chirping going on right now and I for one am wearing out a little…

So… what else has been going on around this place…there has been some cooking, some sewing, some cleaning, and a whole lot of knitting. Let me show you the knitting that has been going on!

The Mother of Cats finished her Alpine Bloom hat that was done in fingering yarn. She used size 2 and 4 needles for this one and added some I-cord to the bottom to balance the colors a little more.

The Mother of Cats also made some progress on a few other projects, but nothing is done. These projects are (left to right) the La Prairie cardigan, the Pressed Flowers socks (in purple!!) and a pair of lined cuffs called Fluffy. Hey, Fluffy is a good name for the CoalBear. I think that’s what I’ll call him all next year.

So, here we are at the end of the year. Have a nice New Year everyone. I’ll be hiding in the closet because of the firecrackers, but I hope you have fun on New Year’s Eve.

Hannah: why does there have to be firecrackers?

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The Fluffy pattern is free if you would like to make one. I’m filled with ideas about how to modify the pattern to produce an outer layer of knitted lace that shows a colored lining below. I have a lot of lace yarns in the stash…
The Alpine Bloom hat is still too tall and slouchy. There have been lots of comments about this online and ideas about how to modify the pattern. If I make another hat, I’m going to modify the knitted chart to omit the knitted leaves at the bottom, but I may also try out corrugated ribbing or knit the I-cord trim again to keep the color going in the ribbing.
Mateo is a really unique little guy. If you pull his tail, he flips over and bunny kicks. He is terrified of Netflix and cowers next to me every time I launch it; it is the big zooming red “N” that scares him, I think. What makes this especially hysterical is the fact that he runs into the room and jumps right up next to me every time he hears me turn on the television just in case I might be starting Netflix. Then there is the chirping… he only meows in emergencies but makes lots of chirping sounds. He likes to sleep under the covers, and there aren’t enough toys in the universe to keep him busy. It’s like owning a very furry monkey with claws…

Hannah and the CoalBear: Knitting Time!

Hi. I’m Hannah.

The Mother of Cats gas been busy organizing all of her knitting for the rest of the year.

First of all, let’s show off the knitting that she just got done: 16 PICC line covers and 9 hats for Frayed Knots.

She even turned in the unbelievably cute hat on the bear.

Now that the Mother of Cats has made her donation for the month she has shifted her focus to organizing her projects for the rest of the year. Oh, boy. She has a lot of projects in mind. Like, a crazy amount of knitting is in the future. Yay. I like to help with the knitting.

First, she wants to get going on her new Weekender Crew, so we wound all of that yarn, and then she cast on. Then she ripped it out and cast on again. Another rip. Another cast on… Finally, she managed to get a few rows done, but she dropped a stitch, so she had to rip it all out and cast on AGAIN. Luckily, we had lots of cookies in the house while this was going on because she made three different trips to the kitchen to get them, and I talked her out of more tuna and even some kitty treats while she was down there. Finally, finally, she managed to get the sweater off to a good start.

The problem was the type of cast on. This is called a tubular cast on, and the Mother of Cats now loves it, but the learning curve was worse than learning to catch a fly in midair.

We also winded up all of the yarn for the new La Prairie sweater last week. I helped with that, too.

Did the Mother of Cats stop with these two projects? No, she did not. She also got out the yarns and organized for several other projects.

Here are all of the yarns that she has organized for her projects. The purple yarns at the top left are for another pair of Pressed Flowers Socks. The pink yarn on top of the magazine is to make a fancy lace capelet. Then there are the yarns laid out next to a striped arm warmer on the top right: those yarns are to knit a new pair of arm warmers exactly like the one laying right next to the yarn. The important detail here is… only one arm warmer! Those arm warmers are the Mother of Cats lucky pair and she has worn them to every hospital stay, ambulance ride, and scary trip into the cath lab. One of them GOT LOST and she absolutely, absolutely needs to make herself another pair right away. Or, at least, before the next serious cold snap. She is thinking of doing a tubular cast on for these mitts and will have to learn how to do the cast off too so the ends match. Learning curve: get the cookies ready!!!

Okay, now let’s talk about the bottom row of pictures. Those two yarns on the left are going to become an Alpine Bloom hat, and there on the bottom right is a reminder that the Mother of Cats needs to FINISH MY BLANKET!!! You know this blanket. We were making really good progress on it when the Mother of Cats stopped knitting because she was concerned about me getting sores all over my tummy. I’m doing much better, and the fur is growing back on my tummy, so the Mother of Cats thinks that maybe we can restart the blanket and we’ll see how I do. Yay! I like that blanket!

I need this blanket for the cold nights to come!

So, that is all the knitting news for now. Let’s go back out on the deck where the Mother of Cats has been waging a war on wasps after Mateo got stung by one of these ugly suckers.

Mateo: Hey! No one told me that those wasps were dangerous! I was just practicing my fly catching skills. You know, catching flies in midair…

Hannah: Whatever, Mateo. Because you are such a dimwit the Mother of Cats had to hang up that goofy wasp trap on our catio. Good thing it appears to be working!

We’re planning on knitting as much as possible out on the catio this fall because it is really, really nice out there. Yay, fall! Did I mention that there are a lot of bugs lately? The crickets are the best!!

That’s all for now.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

Poor Hannah’s tummy sores have been a problem for some time, but I think that we have turned the corner at last. I’m pretty sure that she was allergic to her kitty treats, so I switched to all natural treats, but I also did every practical thing that I could think of. I put towels down on the carpet in the closet where she likes to sleep in case there was something in the carpet; I wash the towels every couple of weeks to keep them clean. I installed a calming diffuser which seems to be just helping the two cats in general as they play and chase each other more than before and some of Hannah’s kitten behaviors have come back. I switched to sensitive skin food. Hannah has gotten a couple of baths. Her fur is growing back, and the rash seems to be gone.

Yes, I did notice that almost everything is pink or purple.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Kitten Invasion and Finished Socks

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’ve been hanging out on the catio as much as I can these days.

The Mother of Cats has been really busy reading books and knitting lately, and she likes to go out on the catio so that is perfect for us. Mateo loves the grasshoppers, and I am a huge fan of the butterflies. The last couple of weeks have been just perfect until about a week ago when the Mother of Cats went off to her son’s for the night, and then they both came back over here with ALL OF HIS CATS!!!!!

Mateo vanished into the closet. Thanks for the backup, buddy. What a baby, right? We were pretty safe because the Mother of Cats put up a barrier at the top of the stairs to keep us safe, which was a good thing because those invading cats took over the whole house!!

Yep. Those kitties got the entire downstairs and THE CATIO while the Mother of Cats stayed upstairs mostly with us and knitted away on her new socks. It wasn’t all that bad, except for the little Siamese kitten who would run up the stairs and try to whap us through the gate every time he saw us. The Mother of Cats said that he was just trying to play, but it is kind of rude, whapping, don’t you think? Mateo certainly thought so!!

Anyway, lets get back to the knitting. Check out the finished socks.

The Mother of Cats is really happy with how the socks turned out. Let’s look at some of the details:

Do you see how thick and cushy the knitted fabric looks on the inside? This is one comfy sock! Look at how nice the afterthought heel is, and how about how the flowers pop out from the background on the outside of the sock? Seriously, this sock is nice! Even Mateo thinks so. (No, Mateo. You don’t get a knitted bunny made in this pattern…)

Back to the invading cats; look at how they acted on the catio!

Yep, that is one of our toys in the paws of THE MONSTER. The Mother of Cats had to move several of the plants, and the invaders even got to eat some of OUR TUNA!!!! They practically destroyed the downstairs cat tree, and whoo-boy, was there ever commotion going on down there every night! I think that a fly got into the house, and to be frank, that little Siamese kitten can practically fly… Just when I thought that the accumulating outrages would never end, the Mother of Cats left us Thursday night and drove to the airport to get her son back. Whew! As soon as he got back the Monster perked up and the kittens calmed down. Mateo even went through the barrier to play with everyone on the catio, but I stayed safely on my side of the gate. The next day all those furry invaders went home to their own catio and Mateo and I returned to bunnyland.

Today the Mother of Cats is back to knitting on her sweater, and before you know it she will have it done and we’ll be hunting for more yarn to play with. Life is good.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The socks are the Pressed Flower Socks by Amy Cristoffers.
The sweater that I’m working on is Alpine Bloom by Caitlin Hunter. I’m getting really close to finishing up the body of the sweater.
My son was working at a convention for his company. That’s him on the right, talking to a customer/attendee. Oh, you can’t see him? Well, you get the idea: stand for hours and talk to conference attendees in a dimly lit and high tech environment.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Black cats rock and we have a new sock!

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Do you see how beautiful I am? This is how I looked when I was a year old.

This is how I looked in the kitten room when the Mother of Cats first saw me.

Didn’t I turn out nice? I was the sweetest kitten in the room, and I was very brave and friendly when the Mother of Cats first met me. The Mother of Cats absolutely did not want to get ANOTHER black cat on that afternoon (she kind of wanted a buff-colored kitten…), but I was so insistent that she really, really needed me that she finally filled out the paperwork and brought me home.

and before you knew it, Hannah and I were best friends!!

Today is National Black Cat Appreciation Day, and there is a day like this because sometimes people think black cats are unlucky and they get left in the shelter and don’t get a home like they should. That is just crazy, right? Look at how cute I am!! The Mother of Cats keeps telling me how good I am, and I AM! I’m a GOOD BOY, and every day, I get lots of attention and tuna because I absolutely deserve it. Also, I am really good at catching bugs, which makes everyone happy around here.

Okay, onto the sock that we have been helping the Mother of Cats get knitted this week.

The Mother of Cats can be kind of lazy when the weather is hot, so this is the sock without the ends woven in or the hole at the heel closed. Just ignore that stuff… isn’t it cute!! The sock has some extra ends that need to be woven in because Hannah kind of went wild and chomped the yarn into pieces twice, but the Mother of Cats still gave her tuna. I’m pretty sure that I should have gotten all of the tuna, but for some reason the Mother of Cats just lets Hannah get away with EVERYTHING when I have to get my claws trimmed all the time, and Hannah never does.

Oh, never mind about all of that. I was supposed to tell you that the socks are the Pressed Flowers Socks and that they fit really, really well with lots of stretch. Hey, I like that pattern and maybe it can also become a little knitted bunny for me to play with? I always can use a new toy and I just LOVE BUNNIES!! (Note from MoC: Mateo, you love to eat bunnies. No. No knitted bunny!)

Fine. I’ll just (sigh) play with the old toys that I already have.

This is Mateo, AKA the CoalBear, signing off.

Hannah: Don’t forget that tomorrow is Caturday!! Also, I’m kind of a black cat, too, so I should be getting extra tuna for sure!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Trail? What Trail?

Hi. I’m Hannah.

This has been a kind of strange week. The Mother of Cats came home on Monday after spending ANOTHER WEEKEND WITH THOSE KITTENS!!! and then she tried to make it up to us by being really nice all week. She fed us tuna twice a day and played with Mateo with the laser light more than usual. Like that would make up for sneaking off to spend time with these furry little guys instead of US.

Okay, they are kind of cute. Still, they aren’t as cute as Mateo and I were at the same age. Just saying…

Anyway, back to the strange week. The children in the neighborhood all went back to school (whatever that it…) this week and it suddenly is quieter in the backyard. A huge flock of geese flew over the yard yesterday, and today the Mother of Cats noticed that some of the berries on the bushes are turning red. The squirrel is more active than usual, and the moon was out in the daytime. Crazy, right? Here are the pictures.

The Mother of Cats is also excited about something called Pumpkin Spice. Is that a type of tuna?

Anyway, let’s now discuss the Mother of Cats and her COMPLETE ABANDONMENT of the Sharon on the Trail MKAL. She didn’t even bother to open up the emails with the pattern updates. She says that she hates her yarns, and she doesn’t love the pattern, and she just wants to knit the stuff she already has and to make some little knitted kitties to give away. I’d be concerned about her, but she is really happy with the stuff that she is knitting now, and I have to admit that it is looking good.

She put her sweater back onto the needles this week and got several inches of the body knitted. Looking good! She says that the funky looking new stitches are that way because they aren’t blocked yet. Mateo isn’t convinced.

Mateo: I’ll reserve judgement until I see that new knitting blocked. Call me Doubting Mateo.

She really spent some time on the new socks that she is making, and she really likes the way they are coming out. I think that has something to do with how she just UP AND ABANDONED Sharon from Security in her quest to apprehend that villainous Keith…

She likes these socks so much she is already dreaming of which yarns she will use to knit the next pair with. Poor Sharon, I’m pretty sure that the Mother of Cats will never return to the trail. She has her eye on some purple yarns for the next pair of socks…

Well, that is it. I hope that you all had a wonderful Caturday.

This is Hannah, signing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

The sweater is Alpine Bloom by Caitlin Hunter.
The socks are Pressed Flowers Socks by Amy Cristoffers.
The abandoned MKAL is Sharon on the Trail by Casapinka. I have decided to wait for the finished shawl before I put any more knitting time into it.
The weather has been playing hell with my breathing. A couple of lows tracked right over the state and in the low pressure I don’t do well at all.

Do you see the low? That’s the place where all the wind arrows are swirling together just east of me in the state (I’m located just east of Denver). Fun and games for people with lung/heart conditions!

Behold Hannah and Mateo as kittens… they were pretty cute!

Hannah and the CoalBear: and she’s already fallen off the trail…

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Hannah: I bet you wished that you had a catio…

In my last report I shared how the Mother of Cats left us for the weekend to go play with her son’s kittens. Hello! We’re kittens too, right?! Well, in our hearts we are. The Mother of Cats says that I’m getting chunky and that I’m hard to pick up now… what is up with that?! If she would let me bring grasshoppers into the house so I could chase them without burning my little feet on the hot deck I’m sure I would slim right down, but does she let me have any fun? Nope. Not so much…

Anyway, the Mother of Cats finished up her first clue of the Sharon on the Trail MKAL shawl and then put it away to wait for the next clue.

I gave it a little grooming before she put it away, and we both thought that it was pretty cute. Then the second clue dropped last week and the Mother saw what it looked like knitted up… and immediately decided that she didn’t want to use these yarns anymore. She never took the shawl out again all week and just worked on her new sweater.

Okay, I have to admit that it is looking pretty darn good, right?

She steam blocked the part that was knitted in the sweater (it is called Alpine Bloom) and while it was drying she hunted and hunted for new yarns to knit the Sharon on the Trail again.

What do you guys think of these yarns? She’s still thinking of using gold instead of that mauve color…

I personally don’t care because it is really darn hot here and we spend every afternoon just waiting it out. The Mother of Cats reads books and I just sleep in any coolish spot that I can find. My favorite spot right now is on the paper from the Chewy box in front of a fan.

Do you see where I had a rash on my tummy? I had another bath (YUK!!!) and now the fur is growing back.

Anyway, once the Mother of Cats had located her new yarns for the MKAL you’d think that she would have cast on and gotten busy knitting, right? Nope. You would be wrong. She saw a sock pattern and went crazy casting on to start them. Then she got an email from her community knitting buddies that made her knit some more PICC line covers and start hunting for yarns to knit little toys and hats. SHE IS COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL!!! Like, she is worse than Mateo at the moment.

Here’s the start of the socks. These will be Pressed Flowers Socks after a whole bunch of time the way she is going.

So, I’m just kind of going with the flow and hoping to get some tuna soon while she is ignoring the shawl, pretending that it is TOO HARD to put that blocked sweater back onto the needles, and saying things like… why should she knit socks when it would be more fun to make some toys (hearts and little mice and maybe some tiny kitties…) to go to with the PICC line covers in a couple of weeks when the next Frayed Knots meeting happens.

Sigh. She should make me some knitted mice!

Mateo: don’t forget that tomorrow is Caturday!

That’s all for now. I’m going to go find another cool spot to sleep in…

This is Hannah, sighing off.

Notes from the Mother of Cats: I’ve been reading like crazy because several books arrived in my library account all at once. Yay!

I’ve been reading All the Sinners Bleed as an audiobook while driving around in the car. The main character is still dealing with the trauma of his mother’s death from… (wait for it) …scleroderma!! I heard that part of the book while driving back from my rheumatology appointment this week. Crazy. In the book the mother suffered from extreme muscle pain, and I had just finished talking with my doctor about increasing my immunosuppressant dose because of my continuing muscle/tendon pain.
I also raced through Killers of the Flower Moon recently. What a great book!!! It’s about a cluster of abuses and murders linked to conspiracies to steal the oil generated wealth of Osage Nation members in Oklahoma. The center of the Osage territory is located in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, a place I’ve been to since I have family located there. While flipping through all the footnotes in the book an interview with the author, David Grann, came on the television. How crazy is all of this!! He has written a new book called The Wager that I already have a library hold on.
I continue to be stalked by synchronicity, obviously.
The community knitting/crocheting group that I knit for has been expanding. We now are donating to other medical centers that have requested sewn PICC line pads for seatbelts in cars, heavy winter hats for homeless shelters, and now we are partnering with the Denver STAR program that provides emergency (non-police) responses to people in mental health crisis, or who are homeless, or any emergency that is not violent or criminal in nature. They need blankets, amigurumi, health items, and hats. Lots of knitting (and crocheting and sewing) needs to be done!
Do you see why I just fell off the trail? For something like this I might even try to crochet some little amigurumi.
Now I’m reading The Covenant of Water. Holy smokes, this is looking to be another really good book! Do you see why the knitting has stalled?
Hannah: Get off the computer, Mother of Cats, and get me come tuna!!! Also, a knitted mouse would be nice…